Category Archives: deer hunting

One Tuesday in November

March 9, 2016 Shawn West Leave a comment

Standing on the damp front porch of the cabin, I took a deep breath of the November morning and the raw chill tightened my lungs into a sputtered cough. I thumbed three cartridges into the underside of my Model 14 and worked the back and forth to chamber a round. The action on the old pump rifle had seen at least four or five decades of work before it had found its way into my young hands, and the fore-end glided into position easily, almost of its own accord. Reaching under, I slid in a fourth shell for insurance.

I turned my head at the sound of another hunter opening the camp door, and saw my dad step out into what was just one more of an incalculable number of mornings he had spent chasing whitetails. This was my first deer hunt since 1997, and I was glad to get into the camp again after a four-season hiatus.

“You ready?” I asked.

He nodded perfunctorily and we started through the grass and up the trail. As we entered the tree line the hushed swish of our boots through frosty grass turned into a soft, rhythmic ‘crunch-crunch-crunch’ in leaves hardened by the overnight drop below freezing. We turned slightly north and headed towards an old beaver pond; the day before, just on the edge of my sight line through the hardwoods, the ghostly shape of a deer had bounded through that spot unexpectedly. At the time, my gun had been laying comfortably across my lap.

That morning we were hoping to see the same deer again. I was planning to be ready, while not really expecting anything to happen.

We spoke not a word as we trudged determinedly through the gloom of the dawning of another November day, and when we arrived at my allotted space, dad told me in a low whisper that he was going to move some fifty or sixty yards to the west of me and cover off the area to my right where, as a right-handed shooter, I would not be able to swing my gun through. He said we’d sit until 10am or so and then he’d get up and do a bit of a push through the surrounding area in the hopes of kicking a deer up.

I nodded, and with a little smirk, dad walked away to my right. His feet in the leaves sounded uncannily like a deer’s footfalls, and I could see him find his chosen spot. He had picked a flat rock under a broad maple as his stand, and he sat down, shifting his feet slightly. For a minute or so after he had taken his seat, I sat in the all-encompassing silence of the woods. Then, from my right, dad broke the silence with two soft calls from a grunt tube.

As if offended by the deer noises put forth by my father, the silence again took over in a heavy pall. Not a puff of wind blew, and no other animal dared profane the stillness with their sounds. I could very palpably hear my own breath in my ears beneath my blaze orange toque, and I peered intensely into the vertical lines of grey hardwood trunks, hoping against hope to catch the white flash of a deer’s throat patch or to spy the vertical grey line of my quarry’s backbone.

I heard it first though. Through the silence, directly in front of me, I could hear the steady ‘crunch, crunch…crunch, crunch, crunch’ of something walking in the leaves, and it was getting closer. Out of the rhythmic and hypnotic approach, there was a punctuated ‘crunch…thump, thump’ and then I knew that a deer had hopped over the low, moss-covered cedar rail fence to the north of my stand, a fence that had been there since the property was a homestead in the late 1800’s. No one in our deer camp was so spry as to make that leap so early in the morning and my heart thumped rapidly. In moments I could see the deer, head down, winnowing its way through the trees. It was on a direct line towards me and I softly slid the safety on my rifle to the ‘off’ position. It barely made an audible ‘click’ as I armed the weapon. Adrenalin had my right hand trembling ever so slightly.

As the deer passed behind a wide tree trunk, I shouldered the gun smoothly and began tracking the animal’s approach. All the while it ambled forward with its head down, while my eyes were riveted to its front shoulder. It would have to turn to my right or left at some point, otherwise it would surely step on my feet, and as if on cue, at twenty paces or so it turned broadside to my left, still walking slowly through the leaves. The front bead of my peep sight glowed bright against the grey of side of the animal and with the aiming point hovering over the deer’s heart I let my hand tighten into a squeeze on the trigger.

“POWWW!” went the rifle and I worked the pump action automatically in the echoing aftermath. To my shock the deer simply flinched, took two quick hops to my right, and stood stock still. It was broadside and looking right at me by then. For what felt like an eternity, but was in reality barely a fraction of a second, I could not believe that I had missed such a lay-up of a shot. The hunter’s primal instinct blared in my brain and I swung the bead back onto the front shoulder, while the deer coiled its internal spring to flee at the sight of such an obvious movement on my part. My front bead found the fur of a deer’s shoulder blade and I again touched off the trigger.

“POWWW!” once more just as the deer jumped. This time I did not even recall cycling the weapon, while the deer went limp in mid-air and landed on its side. Leaves flew as it kicked two or three times before stretching out stiffly. Once again all was still in the hardwood bottom that Tuesday morning. I had been sitting for less than fifteen minutes.

I let out a long, quivering sigh and put the gun back to ‘safe’. Bending down I picked up the two empty brass casings that glowed against leaves still white with frost, and feeling the casing’s heat I shoved them absent-mindedly into my coat pocket. I rolled my head from shoulder to shoulder and drew in a breath that was laced with spent powder. I was elated, embarrassed, bewildered, and frankly a little sad.

But then I always feel a little sad when I shoot a deer.

Our group is dispersed when we hunt deer, and I knew that more than one short-wave radio was going to be switching on at the sound of my gun barking that early into the morning. I flipped my radio on and softly announced that I had been responsible for the shooting and that I had a deer down. A few affirmatives crackled across the airwaves and I switched my unit off. Forty minutes later, dad ambled over to inspect my handiwork. He asked if it was a buck or a doe and I frankly couldn’t recall. I had not left my seat since the shooting action and since I had a tag covering either eventuality in my pocket I had not been really focused on the deer’s headgear. As the deer having antlers didn’t really stick out in memories just so recently forged, I told him it was a doe.

“No, it isn’t” was all he said as stood over the plump, supine form of the deer. I leaned my gun against a tree, walked over and saw the small, basket-rack seven pointer up close. Grabbing the one antler in my hand I picked up the deer’s head and noticed that the antlers were loose and the skull seemed disconnected from the rest of the deer. Sure enough, on closer inspection my second shot had hit the deer at the base of the skull, just below the right ear. Certainly not where I was aiming and the definition of a ‘lucky shot’ but given the multiple vectors of startled deer, swinging gun, bewildered hunter, and hastily fired bullet I was not one to complain.

All this embarrassment and panic could have been avoided had I not shot under the deer with the first round, a fact attested to by a gouged trough in the leaves and dirt at the site of my first attempt.

It was my first buck and just my second deer, and I have had many deer-hunting purists scoff and roll their eyes at this story, caricaturing me as some sort of ham-fisted, trembling mess of a deer hunter, incapable of hitting the broad side of a barn and completely ignorant of the workings of both deer and firearm. To those people I say a gentle profanity and hear them no more.

What transpired all those deer seasons ago was certainly not my finest moment behind the gun, and at best it was a comedy of errors that ended with some venison in the freezer and a tale to tell. Still it is not a story I share reluctantly, because every moment in the fields and forests has merit. For the record, the next deer I shot was perfectly dispatched with one efficient, humane shot through the base of the neck using the same gun, but I say that only to illustrate the randomness of the events related above and not as some macho form of self-aggrandizing atonement. I have missed plenty of deer before and I will miss my fair share of deer again, I can assure you.

The misses and the hits are probably a metaphor for life’s greater meaning, but that’s not what this story is really about. This is just about the thrills and emotions of a hunt that happened in the most unpredictable fashion, and the lifelong memory it spawned.

Which are, at the end of the day, the primary reasons that I hunt in the first place.

deer hunting, hunting, reflections, whitetail deer

Slowing the Game Down

Image November 27, 2015 Shawn West Leave a comment

There is an expression in baseball circles that a key to success is being able to ‘slow down the game’. I won’t belabor the theory but it essentially points to techniques that bring a level of calm to a sometimes frantic sport.

In that respect, I see parallels between baseball and deer hunting, and since I am abjectly terrible at actually killing deer I had a lot of time to think about this over the past few weeks.

For the uneducated spectator, baseball can seem to be the height of tedium. My lovely wife cannot stomach more than an inning on television and past attempts to get her to live baseball games have proven a mistake. She is not alone, and a four-hour-plus day at the ballpark does not hold much appeal to all but the most fanatical of baseball fans. So it goes with some types of hunting, but I find it most crystallized in a deer hunt, particularly when ‘on stand’. I have had many people over the course of my still young lifetime ask me one pointed question over and over again.

“What do you do out there? You mean you just sit? That sounds boring.” And to make a not-so-popular admission, it sometimes is cripplingly monotonous.

Of course, being on stand does not necessarily define deer hunting, or the men and women that do it. In some regions a drive or push hunt is the norm, occasionally accompanied by the sweet music of hounds working a scent trail. In other places, spot and stalk is the modus operandi. Rattling, calling, and decoying play an increasing part as well. Still, I would argue that if an informal survey were conducted, nothing defines or still serves as the default approach to deer hunting more than being 25 feet up a tree, or crouched in a ground blind, or leaned up against a stump or rock waiting for a deer to pass by.

Those are long hours, and depending on where you are in the world, they are sometimes frosty, wearying shifts. I have on more than one occasion done all-day sits that lasted from dawn to dusk, and guys in camp just shook their heads at me. Non-hunters consider it insanity and to put a fine point on it, I don’t really like it either. But I have to do it. I do not move quietly through the woods, I do not have a preternatural ‘eye’ for deer and deer sign, and I do not have countless hours at my disposal to scout and pattern deer.

A hope, a comfortable cushion, and a likely spot are all that I really have in my arsenal.

I’ve seen many enriching things, though, so all is not lost. I’ve seen late autumn sunrises and sunsets that provoke a deep visceral response and could move you to tears. I’ve walked out of a sit into the approaching nightfall while the big heavy flakes of a snowstorm fell fast on a driving wind, sparkling like stars in the beam of my headlamp. I’ve seen a small group of ruffed grouse parade past me at twenty steps, oblivious to the fact that on another day with another weapon in hand I may have turned a few of them into table fare. I had a pine marten climb the tree behind me and sit perched six feet over my head for a full ten minutes; he muttered and purred to himself the whole time while I slowly tried to get my camera out of my backpack for a snapshot. I’ve heard hundreds and hundreds of mallards chattering and trading over my head before settling into a shallow lake a short distance away, their wings whistling in a way that was harmony and cacophony all at once. Songbirds have mistaken my rifle barrel for a twig and perched there for a time. A chickadee landed on my forearm once and a vole climbed across my boot top another time. I once watched a tree sway in a fierce wind and topple with a crash so exhilarating and violent that I felt the ground move from a hundred feet away while my hands trembled from the shock of it. I’ve been privy to these moments and plenty more.

Infrequently, I see a deer.

A deer eventually crossed 400yds from me.

There has been research conducted that found that people would rather experience an electrical shock than be left for long hours with only their thoughts. I do not understand that rationale one bit.

On a deer stand I’ve considered whether proposing to my girlfriend was a good idea. I thought about if I wanted to have a family. I’ve considered what kind of dad I’d be and more recently what kind of dad I am. I have had epiphanies about world affairs that I’ve long since forgotten, I’ve solved complex problems at my job, and I’ve thought a lot about the place hunting has both historically and in the modern sense. I’ve written and rewritten dozens of posts for this site in my mind, and I’ve been inspired by the wilderness to write contributions to other sites. I’ve listened to voices in my head that echo the deer hunters that came before me, and I’ve remembered and forgotten more than clumsy clichés on a laptop can do justice. I’ve napped with an autumn sun on my face and I’ve shivered through sleety afternoons where a warm fire and a deep whiskey were vastly preferable alternatives.

Perhaps if I had paid more attention, I’d have shot more, but it did not seem pertinent then and I don’t really care at this point either. The game has always been slowed down for me when it comes to our deer hunts, so I guess, at least in the baseball definition, I’ve been successful to a degree.

Which is good because it feels like success to me.

deer hunting, hunting

Deer Camp Realizations

Image November 10, 2015 Shawn West Leave a comment

I had been driving for nearly three hours when I made the turn onto the gravel two-track road that leads to the deer camp. In the inky dark of an overcast, early November night I set to nimbly avoiding deep potholes, muddy ruts, low-hanging branches, and the crowns of large rocks embedded in the road.

I’d like to drive a truck, but my real-world sensibilities as a commuter have me in a fuel-efficient family sedan. Some years back Frank, an often missed and sadly departed member of our deer camp fraternity, took it upon himself to paint the largest rocks a bright blaze orange. Our memories of him have not faded over the intervening years, but the paint on those damn rocks has. Thinking of Frank, I switched off the radio and drove the last five minutes to camp in a somber, pensive silence.

THWANG!!

The loud metallic bang on the underside of my car, right below my passenger door told me that as I attempted to nimbly tiptoe around one of the stones on my left side, one of its brethren had found my runner board halfway back on the right. I swore foully at the rock and pressed on. Further on, a raccoon humped its way across the narrow road and climbed halfway up a spindly tree on the roadside. He glared at me comically as I rolled by and for a moment I forget that he was probably hanging around the camp so that he could try to raid our coolers. I made the turn off the two track road and saw the deer camp ahead; in the blackness of the woods surrounding it, the glowing windows resembled the dying embers of a smoldering, unattended campfire. I parked on a grassy spot adjacent the rest of the vehicles, and pulling my duffel out of the trunk, stopped and listened for a moment. The low hum of the gas-powered generator behind the camp and the murmur of animated conversation and country music on the radio inside competed with the breezy November night.

Closing my eyes for a moment, I take a deep breath before I stretch out my car-cramped legs and back. The November night fills my lungs and for a second all I can hear is the late autumn wind in my ears. I exhale slowly, savoring the taste of damp, cool air as if it were the smoke from a fine cigar. Smell is allegedly the human sense most tied to memories, and the night air bracing my cheeks is heavy with that fine chill that makes the deer, and the men that hunt them, remember the falls of the past and the winters that they inevitably bring.

As I open the screen door and look through the window, I catch eyes with one or two of my comrades as they sit around the long wooden table that is the centerpiece of the camp. Everything of import goes on around that table. Meals and stories. Lies and jokes. Arguments and nonsense. Every year I try to think of some novel way to make an entrance, but every year it becomes an afterthought. Walking in I just say something perfunctory like “Hello fellas” or “Gentlemen”.

Right away someone says to sit down. My Dad asks if I ate and before I can answer he tells me that there’s still some roast wild turkey and stuffing in the kitchen. My cousin Dane says to get a beer for myself and one for him while I’m at it.

And that is about the time that I realized why I show up there every year. The odds are slim that I’ll see a deer, and slimmer still that I’ll shoot one. The weather may be so sodden and rainy that we’ll spend hours in camp reading magazines, playing cards, or napping. Close quarters will fray a nerve or two and someone will get lippy with someone else and then immediately forget about it. People will argue about politics, economics, dishwashing, sweeping and all sorts of other things because we are all exceptionally strong and belligerent personalities when we’re in the same space together for five or six days. Odors of varying levels of pleasantness will waft through the cabin and we will laugh a whole hell of a lot. In between all that we will spend several hours of every day in the forest waiting on a deer.

It is an adventure and a trial, a vacation and chore, and the most fun you can have while being an occasional asshole to your family and friends. The hours in stand whip by, and the time spent in the woods melts into my memories.

And then as soon as it started, it ends. Driving out at the end of the week is a mixture of relief and regret. Regret at the passing of another deer season, but relief that it all went to plan, even if no deer strayed into the crosshairs. I’m not far up the road before I’m thinking about the next year, or in this case, the next week. Another deer camp calls my name, and this one is even more cramped, argumentative, and hilarious.

I can’t wait.

deer hunting, hunting, reflections, Uncategorised

A Season Opener for a Failed Deer Hunter

June 24, 2015 Shawn West Leave a comment

With the faintest, furtive greys of the predictably wet November day spreading from the east, I step out onto the deer camp deck and the chill of a pre-dawn drizzle bites into my bare legs. I could have put pants on, but didn’t see the point just yet.

I grab the jug of orange juice off the picnic table and I swirl the grainy slush around inside of it. The drink pours like cement into the red plastic cup and I chug it back as though it were a heavy dram of whiskey. The chill of the ice tightens in my throat as I pour another cup before re-entering the cabin.

The wood stove crackles and pops.

“She’s looking a bit damp.” I announce, and a few grunts acknowledge my observation. I set the jug of juice on the long wood table and a portable radio crackles some trendy country song. In the back room I can hear gear being organized for the day. A gas lantern hisses a yellow haze, and next to it a modern, battery-operated unit glows silent, clean, white light.

I sit in the stiff-backed wooden chair and unwrap a granola bar, content for a moment to watch the primal dance of grown men in tight deer camp quarters. My father and uncles, in their late-50’s or older, are seasoned veterans of this ritual and they move purposefully around the perimeter, eating lightly, pulling on lined work pants, and double-checking their coat pockets or fanny packs. These men travel light in the bush, but don’t ever want for comfort.

My cousins, and others in camp that are of my generation, move less smoothly. We all seem to have more equipment in our ponderous backpacks, and we mill around testing grunt tubes, clipping thick foam seats to our belts, wriggling into space-age, skin-tight athletic shirts, and then pulling thermal hoodies or camo sweaters over those.

I’m a throwback. I wear an old wool sweater over top of my Under Armour.

I get up and move upstairs to my corner of the cabin. From the edge of my cot, I finish getting dressed before I stuff a couple of apples and a candy bar into my backpack. My coat hangs over my bed, and I feel around in the pockets for my gloves and toque. I find my two way radio and flick it on; the ‘full battery’ icon is good news. Descending the stairs, I see that men are already filing out the door.

“Shawn, where’r you going today?” someone says. I had not really thought of that yet.

“Beaver Pond, I think.” It is a snap choice to go to a run of hardwoods that forms a funnel between some ridges and, as the name implies, an old beaver pond.

“Okay,” my dad chimes in “Make sure you stay there until lunch. A deer could come through there anytime.”

“Will do.” I tell him, even though I won’t if the wind changes and gets bad for that stand, or if I just get too cold. Dad nods and heads out. I slip on boots and grab my rifle off of the gun rack on the wall. I’m the second to last one out.

I exit the cabin door, a shining blaze orange beacon. I look to my left and watch similar orange forms slip up the trail, silently headed to their posts. Stepping off the deck, I reach into my pants pocket and find the clip for my .308. With a satisfyingly snug ‘click!’ it nests into the rifle. I check the safety with my thumb and then I work the bolt, smooth and almost automatically.

The familiar, metallic ‘snick-snick’ of the shell being chambered tells me that now, after a year off from it, I’m finally deer hunting again.

I push the safety off and then click it back on again. I picked up that habit from my great uncle Bower, and I do it every time I load a gun. Bower was there in 1995 when I shot my first deer, one of the first on the scene as I recall. He was quite pleased with the little doe fawn I knocked down that day, and so was I. Bower has been gone for over a decade now, but his memory floods back every November.

We smile and laugh when we tell stories of him.

I do not shoot many deer, and it seems that the ones I do shoot are never more than 2 ½ years old. The others in my camp shoot plenty more deer, and those deer are oftentimes a lot bigger, so my lack of prowess has become, in a way, my badge of honour. My feet move quietly on the damp grass and wet leaves, and through wind and spitting rain I hear the cabin door open and close one last time.

I don’t bother looking back, I know who it is, and I know where they are going.

They are going deer hunting, just like I am.